Top 5 Books I've read in the Last 12 Months

My Top 5 Books in the Last 10 Years

1. Stones from the River, Ursula Hegi
2. Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, Fannie Flagg
3. Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy, Jostein Gaarder
4. I Know This Much is True, Wally Lamb
5. The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, Billie Letts

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

From
Amazon:Mattie Ryder is marvelously neurotic,
well-intentioned, funny, religious, sarcastic, tender, angry, and broke. Her
life at the moment is a wreck: her marriage has failed, her mother is failing,
her house is rotting, her waist is expanding, her children are misbehaving, and
she has a crush on a married man. Then she finds a small rubber blue
shoe—nothing more than a gumball trinket—left behind by her father. For Mattie,
it becomes a talisman—a chance to recognize the past for what it was, to see
the future as she always hoped it could be, and to finally understand her
family, herself, and the ever-unfolding mystery of her sweet, sad, and
sometimes surprising life.

Review

Nobody writes “marvelously neurotic”
as well as Anne Lamott. As a writer, I loved her novel on writing, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing
and Life (read my 5-star review here). And I’ve said time and time again that I wouldn’t have survived
my first year as a mom without her memoir, Operating
Instructions: A Journal of my Son’s First Year. Her willingness to lay it
all on the line, flaws and all, is appealing and endearing.

So I was excited to finally read one
of her fiction novels. Blue Shoe is
about Mattie Ryder, a woman struggling to find herself after divorce. Along the
journey, she falls for a married man, discovers her father’s secrets, begins to
understand her mother, and starts to find her strength.

While searching for answers, she
discovers a small rubber blue shoe in her father’s things. It becomes a beacon
of hope and a charm for protection. Mattie and her brother ultimately discover
just how dysfunctional their family is, and how it has affected who they have
become.

I’m all for flawed characters and
families, but there has to be an underlying likability that makes you want to
endure the character’s struggles. Hopefully the payoff is a slightly less
flawed character in the end, one you care about. This book simply ended up
being a struggle for me. I kept feeling like I was on the edge of liking it, of
really embracing the characters, but I never made it there. It makes me sad, because
I really wanted to love it.

I have enough faith in Anne Lamott’s
writing and ability to create raw and emotional story that this book will not
make me give up on her work. But I’ll be doing a bit more research on which of her
fiction books I try next.

Rating:
3 stars

More
about the author:Anne Lamott is the author of the New
York Times bestsellers Grace (Eventually),
Plan B, Traveling Mercies, and Operating
Instructions, as well as seven novels, including Rosie and Crooked Little
Heart. She is a past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.